Secrets of Super Negotiators - It's Never Just About Money

I used to help attorneys, insurance adjusters, physicians and patients resolve medical malpractice cases. Most attorneys and mediators call these cases “pure money” disputes because they don’t believe the personal relationship between the doctor and his former patient has anything to do with the resolution of the lawsuit.

It only took a few months mediating all types of litigated disputes – fights over intellectual property rights, unfair competition, collection, personal injury, professional malpractice and breaches of contract – to conclude that no dispute is “only about money.”

The negotiator who understands that there is no “pure money” negotiation, has reached the status of “super negotiator” because she has already learned something about what motivates people and has already broken through the mass illusion that money is a singular, objective metric of value to all parties.

Although contemporary money seems to have shed all of its qualities except its quantity, ‘its oneness or fiveness or fiftyness,’ we do not in fact use money as if it were fungible. We experience the value of a dollar earned differently from the way we experience one that is stolen or given to us as a gift and we spent it differently as well.

Even money’s form exerts some control over the way in which we are willing to deploy it. Credit card companies have recently seen the benefit in selling ‘debit’ cards as a means of making the gift of money (rather than carefully chosen things) appropriate in settings where cash would seem gauche or even insulting.

Gifts of money are generally meant to be expended on a single item or experience and are typically delivered with injunctions that the recipient buy something ‘frivolous’ or do something ‘luxurious.’The recipients of ‘cash’ gifts are expected to report back on the special use to which the gift was put.

If the beneficiary of the largesse were to spend the money on rent or groceries, it would surely be taken as an insult to the donor and embarrassment to the donee, or else cause for general alarm at the donee’s unacknowledged impoverished state.

When we respond to our friend’s needs rather than their desires, we tend not to give monetary gifts but to (often reluctantly) make loans. And where we might happily and without serious thought spend $50 on a gift, we might well wring our hands at the prospect of lending such a sum for necessities.

A dollar is not simply a dollar.

In helping attorneys negotiate the resolution of litigation, mediators aid them in resolving the non-monetary justice issues – issues capable of resolution primarily through a process that begins with accountability and ends with apology.

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Yes, I’d have to know why the anger. Usually it’s because people haven’t had the opportunity to express their concerns. The money doesn’t “cure” the injustice and lawyers who settle litigation without addressing their clients’ justice issues won’t be asked to represent those clients again. I tell attorneys to remember that they’re working in the justice system, not the financial system, and people do not come to them for money. The lawyers monetize injustice for their clients, forget that they’ve done so and then accuse their clients of caring only about money.

What you are saying is so true. It is common for mediations in which the parties will not have a relationship in the future to be viewed as ‘financial transactions.’ However, it’s important to understand what is important to each party and sometimes that includes understanding what the money means to each person. I observed a mediation involving a car accident. One party’s insurance company offered a sum of money and the other party refused to accept the offer. What the attorneys and mediators in the room failed to recognize is that the refusing party wanted a chance to express how the car accident had impacted their life. For him to settle meant that he would not have the opportunity to be heard.

Yup; and the same is true in commercial litigation. Anyone who says businessmen aren’t “emotional” about litigation haven’t seen them shout, scream, slam doors, threaten the other side with reports to prosecutors and professional licensing boards, name calling, including names impugning certain religions, nationalities and races; asking the “other guy” if he wants to “step outside” for fisticuffs or simply refuse to sit in the same room with their opponent. From all of this and men’s repeated insistence that they are not “personally involved” or “emotional” about business, I’ve concluded men must not consider anger and rage emotions.